


Where the Heart Is

by flaming_muse



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 01:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt reflects after the end of the episode.</p>
<p>an episode tag for 4x06 (“Glease”), no spoilers beyond</p>
<p>set firmly in canon</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Heart Is

Kurt let out a sigh of relief as he and Rachel finally rolled their suitcases into their apartment and pulled the door shut behind them. It had been a whirlwind, emotional trip back to Lima, and a deluge of cold November rain and a crowded, damp subway on the way back from the airport had only added to the misery of it. He was very glad the visit was over and they were back where they were meant to be.

“I’m calling the first shower,” Rachel said over her shoulder, pulling her bag toward her room. “That woman behind me on the train spent at least ten minutes sneezing directly onto my hair.”

“At least you didn’t have a seven-year-old kicking your seat the entire flight back,” Kurt replied. The thought of hot water pouring over his bruised muscles sounded heavenly, but so did settling in and assuring himself that the ordeal he’d put himself through was finally over.

“ _Sneezing_ , Kurt. In my _hair_.” She reached up to touch it and seemed to think better of it, and she spun around to face him. “If I get sick this is officially going to have been the worst weekend ever, and that includes the time I got food poisoning and had to miss the first grade talent show. I had, of course, been a lock to win.”

Chuckling through the tightness in his chest, because if nothing else Kurt could always count on Rachel being Rachel, he picked up his own bag again and said, “I’m sure you were, Rachel. Enjoy your shower.”

“I’ll leave you some water!” she called.

Kurt heard the shower spring to life as he set his bag on his bed to unpack it. He wanted it to be done. He liked his space to be neat, certainly, but even more he just wanted to be officially back. Back _home_ , he reminded himself. This was home. New York and this apartment were home.

Unzipping his bag, he pulled out his neatly rolled ascots, checked to see if they needed to be cleaned or re-pressed, and set them in their place in his dresser drawer. In their _homes_ , because this was where they lived and he lived now.

Home wasn’t the dark, quiet house he had spent last night in with Finn, whipping up a batch of comfort waffles and eating them together in near silence at the kitchen table. Not only was it not the house he grew up in, with its childhood smells and ghosts of memories and people long past, but even more with his dad and Carole away in Washington it felt empty, a shell of walls and roof instead of the warm bubble of safety it had always been. Without his dad, without anyone but Finn to care he was there, it felt like just a house, not a home.

Kurt noticed there was a smudge on the toe of one of his shoes as he removed them from his suitcase, and he used the cuff of his sleeve to see if he could smooth it away. He was disappointed to find that it wasn’t a spot of dirt to be brushed off easily but a scratch on the polished leather that would require more serious attention, and he set the pair by the edge of his doorway to deal with later, after he and Rachel made dinner. He wondered if that annoyingly placed support for the seat in front of him in the auditorium had been the culprit.

Home wasn’t those familiar spaces at McKinley anymore, either. It was a building that had contained triumphant highs and shattering lows for him, and though he could remember the utter joy he’d felt returning there from Dalton it had been impossible to feel a true sense of homecoming as he’d walked those halls with Rachel last night. His time there felt so long ago, so many of his friends elsewhere. He had never really belonged there, but even the place he’d made for himself was gone.

Setting his toiletries kit beside his shoes to be returned to its usual place in the bathroom when Rachel was done scrubbing herself raw, Kurt gathered the small pile of dirty laundry he’d placed beside his suitcase and dropped it his hamper. He looked down at them where they fell, wondering if he could wear them again without remembering the weekend still weighing heavily on his heart.

It had been a mistake to go.

He’d been so sure he needed to. It was supposed to have been simple, or as simple as any of this awful situation was. He was supposed to see Blaine in person and somehow have it all make sense. He was supposed to see Blaine and know how to feel, how to move beyond this horrible confusion within him that made him still long for something he _knew_ he shouldn’t and didn’t want. He was supposed to be able to look at Blaine from afar on stage and have it feel different, have his cheating color everything so strongly Kurt couldn’t feel anything else, so that he would be able to start moving on the way Rachel was with Finn.

But the problem was that it _had_ felt different to see Blaine, just in all of the wrong ways. It hit him right in the chest to see Blaine walking toward him backstage, so perfectly handsome in his white costume, his eyes catching on Kurt’s in disbelief. It made his heart clench beneath his ribs to watch Blaine performing, as dreamy and effortlessly charismatic as always. It made his breath catch to see Blaine bowing with old friends and new faces on the stage they’d sung on so many times together. It made his throat close up to see the pain and desperation in Blaine’s so-familiar face, knowing it was for him.

And it made him wish for things to be anything but what they were when Blaine stood there in the hallway - so penitent, so sad, so sure he could explain the unexplainable - and tried to make things _better_ when they could _never_ be better, no matter what his heart wanted, no matter what Blaine said.

Kurt lifted his chin, turned, and went back to putting his things away where they belonged.

It all felt too raw, too real, too much. He wasn’t over Blaine, but he also wasn’t over what happened, and he had been stupid to think he could find a way to be. His heart was broken. _Blaine_ had broken it, and going to see him had only made it clear those wounds were nearly as raw as they were when they were freshly made.

Because the second Kurt’s eyes had landed on him, he could see that he was still Blaine. He wasn’t a monster or a someone he didn’t know but just _Blaine_ , the wonderful, loving, sometimes confused boy who had captured his heart from the first moment he’d seen him. It hurt to look at him and see him standing right there, with the same emotion-filled eyes and same strong arms Kurt knew would still feel so good to be wrapped in, and it hurt _not_ to look at him, when Kurt had never, ever had to look away before. It hurt that he still wanted him despite all that happened and yet because of it couldn’t even think of having him.

It hurt that it was _Blaine_ of all people who was making him feel this way, when Blaine was the person who had made him feel the best, safest, and happiest he ever had.

Kurt was supposed to be filled with anger and righteous indignation, and he was. He was supposed to be feeling sorry for his tender, broken heart, because he was the one wronged, and he was.

He wasn’t supposed to be pulled towards him, still. He wasn’t supposed to wake up from happy dreams of their time together with tears in his eyes. He wasn’t supposed to wonder why it was over. It wasn’t supposed to matter why. What mattered was that Blaine had cheated on him, and that should have severed the ties that held him in Kurt’s heart.

But they weren’t severed, not completely, and it was such a mistake to go shine a light on how much had changed in his heart and how much hadn’t. He wasn’t over losing Blaine as his boyfriend and best friend, he wasn’t over how unfair it was that he had to be.

It was too much. He should have known it would only hurt. He should have known Blaine wouldn’t let him have the distance he needed and would push to talk to him, though he didn’t know if it would have hurt less if Blaine hadn’t tried.

He should have known he shouldn’t go at all.

He zipped up his empty suitcase and tucked it away beneath his bed, straightening the covers to smoothness when he was done.

Kurt wanted his feelings to have changed, he wanted to be moving forward with his life, and he was. He was moving forward. He didn’t have a choice. But he was still angry, still hurt, still utterly betrayed, because he was never supposed to have had to move forward at all.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Kurt looked down at his hands in his lap and told himself he had to put Blaine behind him. He had to make himself say goodbye to that part of his life and put it all behind him, no matter that a part of him still wished he had everything they’d been to each other.

Except that the trip had proven that he was still in the middle of feeling everything, every bit of yearning, every bit of betrayal. He wanted to be strong and distant, totally beyond it all, but he wasn't. Not yet.

Kurt pushed himself off of his mattress and walked swiftly to put on some water for some tea.

As he waited for it to boil, he stared out of the window into the dark night, but instead of the city street beyond the glass, this city that was supposed to hold everything he wanted, all he could see was himself reflected in the pane. He looked the same as he had that morning when he’d done his hair in a rush in his room in Lima, hurrying to escape back to the place in the world that was his.

And the problem was that even here, back in his apartment in New York, he felt just the same, just as sad, just as lost, just as hurt. He was still caught in this awful place with nowhere to go, nowhere to rest, nowhere to feel safe and protected from the reality of the world around him.

He poured the water into the handmade mug he’d picked up for a steal from a street vendor the first week he’d arrived, watching the liquid turn from clear to amber as the tea steeped, and knew he wasn’t going to find that solace anywhere. He just wasn't. He didn’t have that kind of home anymore.

He didn’t have his father waiting for him at his house, with the TV on and a hug at the ready. And he didn’t have Blaine.

He was never going to have Blaine.

Curling up with his tea in his favorite chair and turning his face back to the night as the sound of the shower finally shut off, Kurt took a shuddering breath and told himself he had to be okay with that, that Blaine wasn’t the only home for his heart he was ever going to find.

Because just like he wasn’t going to get to live in his childhood house, with his memories of his mother singing in the kitchen, just like even in the new house he couldn't have the security of knowing his father would always be there to welcome him... no matter how much it hurt, Blaine was never going to be his home again, either.

There was no going back. There was no changing this awful event that had crushed his heart. There was no way to return to the wonderful life he’d had, the one he was _supposed_ to have, because it was gone. Blaine had taken it away from him. Blaine was still almost entirely the same, as desperate to connect with Kurt as ever, but Kurt’s future with him was _gone_.

Kurt pressed his eyes shut and breathed steadily, carefully until the burst of sadness and anger was past.

He could keep enduring this new reality if he didn’t make any more painful mistakes. He could do that. He knew how to live with things he didn’t like or wouldn’t have chosen for his life.

He just still had to learn how to be okay with this one.

It would take time, he wasn’t there yet, but somehow, someday he would be.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm spoiler-free, so please don't spoil me for anything! Thank you!


End file.
